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Time to Lose the Dad Jeans

Your denim should look like it belongs to Paul Newman, not Matt Lauer. PLUS: Watch our video of other unforgivable fashion missteps that come with fatherhood.

-By Katherine Wheelock

Do you think dad denims have a place in a father's life, or should they be banished along with "WORLD'S BEST DAD" T-shirts? Make your case here.

Photo: Lawrence Schwartzwald/Splash News

It wasn't a good day for Matt Lauer. We're not talking about the day Tom Cruise verbally bitch-slapped him on national television (You should be more responsible), or the day he had to be the one on the bottom in a doubles-luge stunt with Al Roker. We're talking about the day a photo of him at a Gucci party in the Hamptons showed up on the media-gossip site Gawker.

Lauerlocked in a side hug with Jessica Seinfeld, head thrown back in a hearty laughwas wearing what can only be described as dad jeans: the male version of the snug, extra-high-cut denim slacks Rachel Dratch immortalized in the Saturday Night Live commercial for "Mom Jeans" a few years ago. The wash? Wal-Mart blue. The crotch? The length of a baby's arm.

In case you missed it, that moment was your wake-up call. Your go-to pair of jeans might hit slightly lower than Lauer's rib-cage-rubbing pairs, and they might have a slightly more cosmopolitan washdarker, with maybe a strategic patina of wearbut if you picked them out all by yourself a couple of years ago and have established a monogamous relationship with them, there's a high probability that the two of you don't look so cute together anymore. There's also a very good chance that quite a few peoplecasual observers, the guys at the office, and all your wife's friendsthink this and aren't telling you.

"Guys are a little afraid of jeans," says Rogan Gregory, founder of the instant-hit denim label Rogan. "They don't want to deviate from their tried-and-true five-pocket pair. But you can't wear those with a sports jacket. It's not a tight look. You can't just stick with your 'safe' jeans."

No one's suggesting you embrace calf-clinging skinny jeans, or ones that are torn up, or the conspicuously overdistressed kind twentyish guys wear on Cherry Bomb binges in the big city. That would be a mistake only slightly less tragic than Mr. Today's suburban-mom jeans. But it's worth taking a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror from the waist down.

"You have to reevaluate and give it some thought," says Carl Chiara, the design director of Levi's Capital E and Levi's Vintage Clothing. "Some guys don't even try their jeans on before they buy them." At the moment, Chiara is meticulously replicating a pair of Levi's from 1890a simpler time, back before words like rise and wash and whiskering embedded themselves in your personal vernacular.

If you're feeling paralyzed by choice, it's understandable. But to take a grandpa-in-the-La-Z-Boy, self-righteous approach and stick with your L.L.Beancut pair is to do yourself a disservice.

"I don't think it's that big of a commitment to go shopping once or twice a year," Gregory says. He adds this incentive for double-checking that your jeans aren't the sartorial equivalent of a minivan: "I think women do notice. I've been told on many occasions by guys⿿Your jeans got me laid.'"